Don’t Let the Rajapaksas Ruin Sri Lanka

Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Sri Lanka was for decades an example
of how sectarian conflict can wreck an otherwise fortunate
country. It has had three years to show how devolving power to
an ethnic minority can bring about lasting peace. Now it looks
as if the opportunity will be lost.

Sri Lanka paid an enormous price to bring 26 years of civil
war to an end. An estimated 40,000 people died in the last
months of fighting in 2009, bringing the conflict’s final toll
to more than 100,000. This includes a sitting president,
Ranasinghe Premadasa, and a former Indian prime minister, Rajiv
Gandhi, who were killed in suicide bombings by the separatist
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Yet there was hope of peace with the victorious
government’s offer to cede autonomy to the country’s ethnic
Tamil minority, most of whom live in the north and east.
Unfortunately, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa now
intimates that he has no intention of following through on that
offer.

In a speech Feb. 4, Rajapaksa said it wasn’t necessary to
have “different administrations based on ethnicity.” He was
referring, presumably, to his promise to devolve power to
provincial councils. Already, the central government, which is
dominated by the country’s majority Sinhalese, has denied these
bodies even limited powers -- notably over land and police --
that they are guaranteed under the constitution’s 13th
amendment. The Tamil-majority northern province hasn’t been
allowed to so much as have a council.

Alarming Move

In October, Rajapaksa’s brother Gotabaya, the powerful
secretary to the Defense Ministry, called for the 13th
amendment’s repeal. Then last month, after a Supreme Court
ruling affirmed the amendment, the country’s parliament, which
is controlled by the president’s party, removed the chief
justice. This alarmed not just Tamils but also the Sinhalese
middle class.

Meanwhile, the government has made no significant effort to
account for atrocities committed during the civil war and
continues to treat Tamils harshly. Detention without trial,
arbitrary arrests and disappearances persist in the north and
east.

The Tamil National Alliance, a coalition of political
parties, has been trying to negotiate improved conditions and
genuine self-rule. The Rajapaksa brothers don’t seem to take the
TNA seriously. Gotabaya has observed that with the battlefield
defeat of the Tigers, the government is under no pressure to
make concessions.

In response, some TNA leaders have begun hinting that
separatism remains an option. Such talk, in turn, strengthens
Sinhalese nationalists who argue that the Tamils would only
pocket concessions on self-rule and move on to pursuing their
own state.

Yet the Rajapaksas -- a third brother, Basil, is the
minister of economic development -- aren’t entirely unmovable.
They still seem to care how they are regarded in the wider
world.

The government lobbied hard in its own defense last year at
the annual meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The body nonetheless approved a resolution noting that Sri
Lanka’s postwar Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission
downplayed war-crimes allegations. The resolution also called on
the government to implement the reconciliation commission’s
recommendations. Sri Lanka responded in July with a vague
framework that put the military and police in charge of
investigating themselves.

The U.S. has said it will sponsor a new resolution at the
Human Rights Council’s session beginning Feb. 25. U.S. officials
should work to persuade the group’s 47 members to use tough
language that lets the Rajapaksas know Sri Lanka can’t jettison
its obligations to its own people and escape a public shaming.

Summit Demands

In addition, members of the Commonwealth of Nations should
revisit the decision to hold their biennial summit in Sri Lanka
in November, a major coup for the Rajapaksas. Canada has said
its prime minister, Stephen Harper, won’t attend unless the
government addresses issues such as reconciliation with the
Tamils and the judiciary’s independence; the U.K. has taken a
similar approach.

It has been argued that leaning on the Rajapaksas will only
push them further into the embrace of the Chinese, who have big
investments in Sri Lanka and little interest in how the Tamils
are treated. Yet Sri Lanka, with its parliamentary traditions
and customary separation of powers, lives more comfortably in
the sphere of other democracies. The Rajapaksas know what it
takes to belong in that club. They need only keep the
commitments they’ve made.